The seminar on men and violence against women provided an unusual
opportunity to bring together over one hundred researchers,
practitioners and policy makers to discuss a wide range of topics
related to men’s violence against women. In the course of two days we
addressed exceedingly complex issues, explored layers of meaning around
men’s violence, and raised many more questions for future meetings of
this kind. I applaud and sincerely thank the Council of Europe, and in
particular the Steering Committee for Equality between Women and Men,
and Ms. Ólöf Ólafsdóttir and her formidable team for making this
meeting possible and providing a forum for the necessary
interdisciplinary and international debate that needs to happen around
men’s violence against women. Because the details of the reports
presented at the seminar are available in print, I shall focus my
conclusion on recurring themes and contested understandings.

Methodology and the Evaluation of Research

Several experts addressed the need for quantitative surveys in order
to obtain data on the extent of violence against women. Ideally, such
data would be reliable, valid, and comparable across different regional
and national contexts. Although there has been a development in surveys
from an early focus on crime in general to a recent, more specific focus
on violence against women, survey design and use are far from perfect.
As a minimum, a good survey needs to pay careful attention to the
wording of its questions and incorporate language that makes sense to
the women who respond to it. Terminology and language are extremely
important. One example for this is the differential estimates of sexual
assault when women are asked if they have experienced ‘rape’ or ‘coerced
sex’. Other important issues in survey research include the matching
and training of interviewers, the use of various response formats
including closed and open questions, sampling frames, and access
strategies that do not exclude those women who are marginalised and
particularly at risk of being attacked or assaulted (e.g. elderly
women, women belonging to ethnic minorities, immigrants, or the
disabled). The meaning of violence can vary considerably within
individual respondents who reflect on different experiences with
violence. it can vary within countries and across countries. and last
but not least between men and women. While there are some examples of
strategies to address the meaning of violence in the context of survey
research, there are also many examples of surveys that do not address
such variability of meaning but presuppose that violence means the same
to women and men. Therefore, caution needs to be exercised in the
uncritical design of surveys, and in the uncritical interpretation of
their findings.

This note of caution needs to be extended to the evaluation of
research in general. No research produces facts that speak for
themselves. Data, whether quantitative or qualitative, need to be
interpreted and organised within frames of reference. Therefore, it is
also important to interrogate those frames of reference and ask to what
extent they contribute to gender equality and the dignity of women. This
is particularly important with regard to statistical data, because most
of us are used to thinking of numbers as something ‘objective’, and
considering the privileged position of the notion of ‘objectivity’
in contemporary science, numbers can be powerful tools of influencing
the decision making of scholars, practitioners, or policy makers. It is
also necessary to weigh the need for more data on women’s
victimisation against the need of those women for safety, and to be
careful not to ‘plunder’ women’s experiences with violence in the
name of science.

Gender as a Fundamental Social Division

Several experts noted that research on violence as well as research
on the development, maintenance, and change of feminine and masculine
identities needed to be gendered in a way that recognises gender as a
fundamental social division. This includes recognising that thinking in
relatively rigid dichotomies of male and female difference may itself
obscure our understanding of how gender identity develops, is
solidified, or can be reconceptualised. It also includes recognising
that adding women to masculine social contexts does not automatically
deconstruct rigid notions of gender difference, as the example of women
in the Israeli military shows.

Focus on the ‘Imaginary’

Another recurring theme concerns the inclination to interpret men’s
violence against constructions of imaginary femininity or masculinity as
compared to what women and men actually do or experience. For example,
traditional psychoanalytic theory as well as some strands in recent men’s
literature seem focused on imaginary notions of women, in which women
and in particular mothers are constructed as overpowering, omnipotent
beings. Such notions of female power are at odds both with the lack of
power women in abusive relationships experience and with the perception
of teenagers who grew up with violence in the home and who, even under
considerable adversity, can have very positive images of their mothers
that acknowledge the real-life dilemmas of mothers living with violent
husbands or partners. A second example is the rhetoric of men as
the protectors of women during warfare, which is at odds with the
reports of men leaving women (as well as children and elderly men)
behind in villages where they are attacked and/or sexually assaulted by
male soldiers from the enemy camp. No doubt, individual men seriously
wish to protect their families from harm. And yet, it is painful to
witness how often women find themselves unarmed in war, and vulnerable
in peace.

4. Four Perspectives on Explanations for Men’s Violence

The experts presented many complex explanations and social theories
to explain men’s violence that can be highlighted from at least four
different perspectives: explanations focusing on internal processes of
the integration of violence into masculine identities, explanations
focusing on external circumstances presumed to encourage male violence,
the risk factor approach, and explanations focusing on the deliberate
social construction of institutions that foster those masculine
identities in which violence takes a central place.

a. Internal Processes: Gender Identity Development and Social
Learning

At this meeting we have addressed explanations that detail internal
processes underlying violent behaviour and that draw on psychoanalytic
theory, socialisation theory, and to some extent learning theory.
Psychoanalytic concepts tend to focus on early childhood experiences
around the differentiation of Self and Other that lead to complex
patterns of the construction of Self and Other. More recent
psychoanalytic work includes experiences during adolescence in the
formation of gender identity and posits the possibility that, during
this period of life, gender identities may in fact be revised.

Similarly, notions of social learning tend to focus on early
childhood experiences, although social learning continues into adulthood
and indeed happens everyday throughout our lives. In fact, we usually do
not enter some settings for social learning, such as the workplace or
volunteer organisations, until we are adults and other settings, such as
the family, may stay with us throughout our lives.

If socialisation experiences and the construction of Self and Other
do indeed contribute to the formation of violence-identified
masculinities and men’s violence against women, we need to be open to
the possibility that such processes continue throughout life, and likely
in settings that are crucial for other purposes as well such as earning
a living, or being integrated into the community. That is, it becomes
increasingly difficult to separate the ‘normal’ institutions of
daily life and social organisation from the formation of masculine
identities, including those identities that are ingrained with violence.
What this means is that throughout life there is considerable
opportunity both for reinforcing violence-identified masculinities and
for revising them.

b. External Circumstances: Rapid Social Change, Instability, and War

The experts also addressed explanations that relate men’s violence
implicitly or explicitly to social circumstances, in particular to
notions of rapid social change and social instability, as well as to
warfare and its societal aftermath. It is important to acknowledge the
hardship that warfare and social upheaval create for those who have to
live through it, and to investigate the potential role of international
inequality in creating or perpetuating localised instability or war, and
to understand the toxic effects on civic society ‘at home’ of wars
waged in neighbouring territory. It is also important to explore how
social change and war influence people differently and to examine who
benefits from such changes and who becomes more vulnerable.

A largely unexplored area concerns the transitions from periods of
relative stability to relative instability and on to relative stability.
For example, how do we come to terms with reports that individual men
who appeared to be ‘peaceful’ before war seem to turn into violent
women haters during the war? The experts debated whether violence
against women during armed conflict was primarily a matter of permission
to be violent and access to vulnerable victims, or whether there are
other things going on in terms of gender relations and the construction
of Self and Other, friend or foe. Such explanations are probably not
mutually exclusive. Brutalisation of men in the context of armed
conflict may be a multifaceted process that may include permission to be
violent as well as training to be violent and training to dehumanise and
objectify those who, by official propaganda or the memories of
deep-seated humiliation, become the designated enemy.

In this context, the experts discussed the role of shame, and the
silence around shame, which may continue across generations. As mass
rapes of women during warfare have happened throughout history and
continue to happen to the present day, women have been carrying a
suffocating burden of shame that manifests itself in deep depression and
is cloaked in silence. It is necessary to create conditions in which we
learn to listen to those who learned to live with their shame in
silence.

It is unclear how women’s experiences of shame compare to the shame
that they bring onto their families and countries in those contexts
where family honour is defined through women’s chastity. While the
connections between the shame of individual women and the shame attached
to notions of idealised femininity are not well understood, we noticed
that the shame of individual women seems to contribute to their
isolation and being outcasts of society, and is related to loss of
control, whereas men in such contexts seem to have the option to clear
their families’ names of shame through the honour killing of women and
thus remain a respected member of their communities. That is not to say
that individual men in such contexts are not conflicted over the issue
of honour killings. It was also noted that sexual violence against women
in situations of armed conflict involves attacks that may be tools to
shame their husbands, fathers, and brothers, but are still attacks on
the women themselves and their sexual and national identities.

c. Risk Factors

The concept of risk factors derives largely from research on public
health. When applied to men’s violence against women, we need to
distinguish between risk factors for being violent (such as believing
that women are subordinate to men) and risk factors for being victimised
(such as separating from a violent man). Our discussion of stress as a
risk factor showed that the relationship between men’s experience of
stress and their violence against women is controversial. In part, this
controversy seems to result from the different perspectives different
experts take on stress, the wide range of men’s stress experiences in
different settings such as family, work, the military, or combat as well
as the frequent observations of those who work with violent men that
violent men do not seek out such programmes until they are experiencing
sufficient stress. To advance this fruitful debate, it seems necessary
to distinguish between different forms of stress (e.g., career-related
stress versus the fear of losing one’s wife) and to analyse the
relationship between stress and violence for different groups, not just
for men, but for women as well.

With all risk factors we need to pay attention not only to the
correlation between risk factor and men’s violence, but to the
patterning of that violence and thus to the targets of potentially
stress-induced violence. To illustrate the importance of attending to
the patterning of violence, so-called random sprees of violence by
individual violent men often turn out to be directed rather
systematically against individuals who may not have had any personal
relationship with the aggressor but happen to belong to groups that the
aggressor defined as worthy of being attacked or killed.

d. Explanations Focusing on Deliberate Social Enterprises

Finally, the military is an example of an institution that
deliberately and systematically constructs masculine identities in which
violence plays a crucial role. A gendered analysis of the military also
makes clear that, at least in the case of Israel, men’s successful
participation in the military, and thus their likely adoption of a
violence-identified masculinity, is rewarded with considerable perks in
civil society such as access to prestigious jobs and political
influence. Mentioned only cursorily was the role of organised religion
in the construction of gender identities and gender hierarchies, and the
relative acceptance of violence against women. We heard more of
efforts to reform deliberate social enterprises such as the police and
the legal system with the goal to reduce violence against women. Police
training by battered women’s advocates has been instrumental in
beginning to change the police response to violence against women, at
least as far as violence in the home is concerned. Similarly, there have
been many impressive, if recent, efforts towards changing laws and
legislation so as to acknowledge more fully women’s right to safety,
dignity, and integrity. However, there is an important difference
between the examples of the military, the police, and the legal system.
Legal reforms and reforms of police response for the most part are
directed at the punishment of the perpetrator. In contrast, we saw how
the military is instrumental in the construction, and subsequent reward,
of violence-identified masculine identity, and thus in the production of
potential perpetrators. So far, there has been no comparably developed,
defined, and resourceful social enterprise instrumental in the
construction of non-violence-identified masculinity.

Considering the frequent references to societal turmoil and warfare
during this meeting we may note that the deliberateness of the
construction of violence-identified masculinity may become invisible
over time, and that such violence-identified masculinity in due time may
appear to be an ‘inevitable’ response to social change.

5. Role of Community

Several experts spoke of the role of community in either encouraging
or discouraging men’s violence against women. Communities include real
people and the messages they send about men’s violence against women.
Community includes family members and pre-school teachers, social
workers, police officers or those who run intervention programmes for
violent men. Community also includes the media and the imagery of men’s
violence against women that is perpetuated by the media such as notions
of stranger rape. Community also includes supranational organisations
such as the Council of Europe, and the messages that come from such
prestigious international communities. Community provides, or withholds,
support structures. We discussed which support structures communities
provide for women and men, respectively, and to what extent communities
encourage or discourage men’s violence and non-violence. Several
experts argued that such structures change as communities move from
periods of relative stability to periods of upheaval or war, and may not
revert entirely to the original levels of stability after periods of
crises. What happens to women and men’s support networks during such
changes? For example, to what extent does the formation of armed
militias or guerillas erode social support from men for men’s
non-violence? Occasional reports suggest that there are individual
soldiers who try not to participate in organised rape, and who implore
the women they encounter to pretend they had been raped so as to protect
the soldier from being killed by his male peers for not
raping. From a different angle, the role of community
support becomes chillingly clear in the lives of children and teenagers
who have none. We heard about children who grew up in violent homes or
in complete societal neglect. Too many find themselves with no support
network, alone with their legacy of violence, shame, and confusion, and
without a trustworthy adult role model who might be able to help them
with the transition from fantasising a life of respect and harmony to
actually living it.

Finally, communities bear some of the societal costs of violence
against women. While cost estimates are fraught with methodological and
ethical problems, putting monetary values on individual suffering may
convince reluctant policy makers to invest more money in the prevention
of violence against women.

6. Non-Violence and Non-Violent Masculinities

We need to know more about the creation of non-violence and the
conditions under which non-violent masculinities flourish, just as we
need to conceive of different trajectories towards violent
masculinities. Not all men are violent, and not all men rape, even if
they could. Why not? As research and practical work with violent men is
just beginning, we also need to pay attention to non-violent men, their
experiences, and their strategies of non-violence.

With regard to the individual or psychological level, recent
psychoanalytical work highlights the creative potential of the tension
between the assertion of the Self and the mutual recognition of the
Other. While this tension may arise for the first time in infancy, it
likely will continue throughout life. Some experts suggested that men’s
ability to tolerate such tension might be related to their non-violence,
whereas the ‘resolution’ of that tension through the construction of
rigid gender or ethnic identities may encourage violence. With more
fluid approaches to gender identity boys may be able to identify with
mothers and feminine role models without ridicule, and girls may be able
to identify with fathers and masculine role models without rejection.

On a societal level, creative potential may arise from sustaining the
tension between privilege and equality. Often, this tension is resolved
in the form of hierarchies and pecking orders, which leave some men
relatively privileged and protected, and most women, as well as many
men, relatively vulnerable. Most of us have lived within hierarchical
social institutions for our entire lives, from the family, through
formal schooling, to the workforce. That makes it difficult to conceive
of less hierarchical social organisations. Nevertheless the efforts
seems worthwhile so that “le savoir ne sera pas subordonné au pouvoir”
(knowledge or wisdom will not be subject to power).

The promise of sustaining the tension between self-assertion and
mutual recognition is also to fully realise one’s human potential. But
why be fully realised if you can be partially realised and be president
of a large corporation and drive an expensive car? The answer is, once
you have tasted this creative tension, everything else is bland.

I thank the Council of Europe for organising this meeting, and I
thank all participants for coming together and sharing their invaluable
knowledge and insights.